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Monday, August 28, 2023

Dragon Fruit plants are starting to pay off.

My Dragon Fruit plants started blooming in August. They flower at night and are closing by the morning. Many are self-fertile, assuming there's something around (like me with a paintbrush) to get the pollen from the male parts transferred to the female parts. Some are self-sterile, and need something (e.g. me) to get pollen from a different species before they'll set fruit. The issue is, of course, that you can't control which plants flower when, so you don't always have a choice.

The flower at the top left is a Zamorano, a Honduran H polyrhizus cross purchased early 2022.  

The others are Delight, H. undatus X H. guatemalensis also purchased as a cutting in early 2022.

There were arguments online about whether either of these were self-fertile. I moved pollen between all these flowers and most of them set fruit. 



Here is a photo of them fully open, with a man's hand for size comparison. The wooden posts are five foot tall 4x4" fenceposts with jute sackcloth around them. Dragon fruit climb trees in the wild and put roots into the sacking to hold on. The plants are in 15-gallon pots of well-draining soil. 
















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